=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1537/paper7
|storemode=property
|title=Context as a Structure of Emergence: An Inquiry from a Phenomenological Point of View
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1537/paper7.pdf
|volume=Vol-1537
|authors=Giulia Lanzirotti
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/context/Lanzirotti15
}}
==Context as a Structure of Emergence: An Inquiry from a Phenomenological Point of View==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1537/paper7.pdf
Context as a Structure of Emergence.
An Inquiry from a phenomenological point of view
Giulia Lanzirotti
PhD student in Philosophy at Consortium FINO, Italy
Abstract. The aim of the present study is to focus on and to
reevaluate the notion and the role of context as the ontological
structured mind-independent dimension that guides our experience.
Following the Husserlian and the Heideggerian phenomenology, the
context can be conceived not simply as a frame which surrounds the
objects, but rather as an articulated horizon that can be thought as
the a priori condition of any kind of experience. It is a structured
reality, and its role consists in making possible the emergence of the
crucial structures which steer both the practical and theoretical
experience. The context, as an articulated dimension of possibilities,
shows itself as already typified. By virtue of the notion of Typus
(type), the context possesses a specific structure which displays
regularities and internal consistency and allows the emergence of the
experience along with its objects, also the conceptual ones.
Keywords: context, Typus, practice, emergence
1 Introduction
Traditionally, in philosophy, the fact that our experience is always given in a world is oftentimes
regarded as something philosophically negligible, as a simple matter of fact that defines our natural
life. By and large, it is common practice to bracket the fluidity of the experience along with all its
features, so as to configure the peculiar space of play needed for the philosophical analysis o f the
knowledge process. Schematically speaking, in this way the object of the investigation can be isolated
from its context and purified from everything that is external to it, as to focus the attention on the
single entity that we want to study. In other words: the core of the research is a de-contextualized
entity.
This kind of negligence about the role of context is strictly related to a specific attitude that has
qualified the metaphysical and epistemological philosophy. The history of philosophy is characterized
by certain theoretical binomials such as universal/accidental, necessity/contingency,
primary/secondary qualities, and so forth. We can consider all these distinctions as specific versions of
the main dichotomy between the question about what and the question about how. Usually philosophy
has ascribed a role of fundamental importance to the first component of each couple, and only a
dependent function to the second one. The context, usually portrayed as a secondary component,
contingent, possible, fluctuating, has customarily been regarded as subordinated to the inquiry
regarding its rooted individualities. In this perspective, first of all, there is the object, the what that we
want to study, and then the context, representative of the how in which the what is located. So,
ordinarily, the context has been studied in relation with the epistemological process in which it
becomes a co-factor, ineradicable and yet inferior to the general subjects of the inquiry.
2 Objectives
Given these premises, here, I follow the Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology in order to:
1) Analyze and reevaluate the notion of context as the ontological structured mind-independent
dimension that guides our experience and makes possible the emergence of its objects. The context
can be thought:
• As a mind-independent dimension, wherein our experience is necessarily given, as an a priori
condition of any kind of experience;
• As a dimension of open possibilities, in which takes place the emergence of the crucial structures
which steer both the practical and theoretical experience;
• As a structured reality already typified, which displays regularities and internal consistency.
2) Recognize context as always typified, so as to focus the attention on the peculiar notion of Typus
and its function;
• By virtue of the peculiar notion of Typus (type), the context possesses a specific structure which
allows the emergence of the experience along with its objects. This last notion is of pivotal
importance when it comes to understand the normativity which shapes the context and is, therefore,
the very root of the experience, of its objects, and also of the concept itself. The typified context is
the necessary condition of the emergence of the experience.
3) Move a step further and propose to see the dimension of practice as the appropriated space to
conceive the specific dynamic of the typified context.
Section 6 will be dedicated to the notion of context, as presented in Husserl's genetic phenomenology; the
Section 7 will be dedicated to the complex notion of Typus, as a fundamental structure of the context. In
Section 8 I would like to move from Husserl to Heidegger, with the intention to consider the practical
dimension as the dimension of reference in order to clarify the nature of the idea of the typified context.
3 Methodology
In order to narrow the research, I will consider Husserl's Experience and Judgment – where the role of
context is broader compared to previous works [1]-, and Heidegger's Being and Time. Following Husserl and
Heidegger's phenomenology, it is possible to retrace the elements to conceive the context as an articulated
dimension.
I intend to conduct the research following a theoretical perspective: the inquiry will be carried out
by means of a textual analysis which refuses to be merely historical or exegetical; rather it aims to
pinpoint all the theoretical stances that serve to the delineation and interpretation of the notion of
context and the notion of Typus. These two concepts are not explicitly thematized by Husserl, but are
functionally present in the text. My intent, therefore, is to give a portrait of the notions, by collecting
their characteristics from the text.
Linking these two works I will focus on the ontological side of the question, rather than the epistemological
one. This shift is made possible by the affinity between the Husserlian genetic phenomenology and the
Heideggerian ontological project.
4 Related Works
In the critical literature about the role of context (or Horizon) in phenomenology, studies privilege
the epistemological side of the question, rather then the ontological one. The context acquires its value
within the inquiry regarding the knowledge process addressed to the object of perception. In this
respect, the contribution of D.W Smith in Content and Context of Perception, in Synthese, The
Intentionality of Mind, Part. I,1984, p.81-87, is particularly crucial. In his most renowned work, jointly
written with R. McIntyre, Husserl and Intentionality: A study of Mind, Meaning, and Language,
Synthese Library, Dordrecht, 1982, the author provides an overview of the notion of context within
Husserl's production, pointing out the multiple roles it assumes. More recently, the role of context in
the Husserlian work has been studied by S. Geniusas in The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl's
Phenomenology, Springer, Dordrecht, 2012, where the author also dedicates a paragraph to the World-
Horizon and to the Typifying Consciousness. Other important contributors are: D. Welton, M.
Larrabee, A. Steinbock, H. Pietersma.
For the notion of Typus (type) is necessary to recall D. Lohmar's important work, especially:
Husserl's Type and Kant's Schemata, in D. Welton, The New Husserl. A critical Reader, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 2003, and the article Types and Habits. Habits and their cognitive
background in Hume and Husserl, in Phenomenology and Mind , IUSSPress, 2014, p.40-51, where
Lohmar confronts the notion of Typus with the Kantian and Humean philosophy.
The theme of practice in the Heideggerian philosophy has been analyzed by many authors,
especially by (neo)pragmatists like: H. Dreyfus, R. Brandom, M. Okrent etc. but as far as I know there
are no authors that analyze the idea of a typified context in relation to the Heideggerian practice.
5 Preliminary conceptual clarification of the vocabulary
I will use context as a synonymous with horizon (the English translation for the German Horizont)
which is the proper expression employed by Husserl and as a synonymous of world (Welt) used by
Heidegger. I would like to record that it has been noticed that in English 'horizon' may have the
connotation of something we can expand and go beyond, whereas in German Horizont connotes
something that sets limits which we cannot go beyond but must remain within. This comment would
seem to apply to Husserl's use of Horizont as well as Heidegger's [2].
In respect of these last observations, I have to specify that context, here, means a concrete worldly
dimension that has some sort of limits. This limit exists but has to be conceived as flexible – and
changeable, because it is in motion and not defined and fixed once and for all. When I use horizon, I
will use it with this meaning.
6 Context
6.1 Context as a primal dimension
Let us start by analyzing the notion of context [3]. Husserl ascribes a pivotal role to the context: it is
explicitly regarded as a fundamental component of our experience.
ᵒ Husserl states that our experience always occurs in a given horizon, which fosters its
formation and orientates its sense. Therefore, an actually isolated element does not exist:
every object subsists only in connection with the other components and only within the
horizon from which it emerges.[4]. The context is the necessary wherein of the
experience [5].
◦ The object is not a pure per se, but it is always animated by a constant shaping
process and inserted in a frame of relations which permeate it. Here the context is not a
mere frame that surrounds the object. It is the context itself that contributes to the
specific form and articulation of experience and objects. Hence, the context takes shape
as the essential horizon which allows the formation of the experience and its objects. It is
an a priori condition of possibility of the experience.
◦ Moreover we have to highlight that the context is, as the wherein of the experience, a primal dimension, i.e.
it «is always already there without any attention of a grasping regard, without any awakening of interest» [6]: The
context is, therefore, a mind-independent dimension.
6.2 Context and possibility
The context is the mind-independent dimension from where the experience begins. However, this
independence should not to be conceived as something completely unrelated to the experiencing
subject.
As the where-from [7] of the experience the context, as an always given dimension, is known by
means of familiarity and habitualities, and at the same time it is an articulated dimension, pervaded
by this familiarity and habitualities that shape the concrete everyday life in its practical and
theoretical activities.
In this regard, context becomes a field of possible movement [8]. In this motion innervated by the
directives of familiarity, the relation between the experiencing subject and the context seems to have
a circular nature. Every grasp of the object is not transient, but it constitutes the crucial backdrop,
contributing to a constant renewal of the forms of familiarity, bringing about new features, settling as
a trace always prompt to resurface, and open new accesses for the observer.
Familiarity and habitualities represent the primary access to the context: these forms of relation
between the horizon and the experience are not something applied by the constituting subject but
plastic forms of conjunctions that contemplate how the structure of the context is given and how the
experience can move in.
From this perspective the context is the where-from in which the emergence of the crucial structures,
that steer both the practical and theoretical experience, originate. In this regard the context is not a
collection of mere data [9] and even not only the potential backdrop of the objects of our perception.
The ceaseless internal dynamic displays the nature of context as a structured domain of open
possibilities [10].
6.3 Context and structure
Saying that context is a dimension of open possibilities means that it is not just a portion of space
with a determinated number of entities. It is not a perfectly limited set (like a mathematical set) of
specific objects, of fixed things that need to be catalogued. This notwithstanding, the possibilities
brought about by the context are not ad libitum; they have to comply with the normativity – although
weak – which is inherent in the context of experience.
The context, indeed, is not an a-logical frame but shows an inner structure. We can read that the
context:
«is a field of determinate structure, one of prominences and articulated particularities»
[11].
Let us recap the features of context, expressed in this passage, from a normative standpoint:
context is a domain which possesses a determinate structure, a qualitative depth (prominences) which
gives rise to individualities, which are in their turn articulated. Context is not an homogeneous space,
it exhibits a varied qualitative gradation that may be defined as a functional inhomogeneity. These
internal variations allow the emergence of multiple individualities, the objects of our experience that
are the epicenter of our attention.
Moreover, this formal-qualitative structure of possibilities which is the dimension of the context is
characterized as always typified. In this respect, Husserl claims that the context is «already pre-given
as multi-formed, formed according to its regional categories and typified in conformity with a number
of different special general, kinds, etc.» [12].
In this passage, the typified context is depicted as a structured horizon, which contributes to form the
modalities of experience, as well as the concepts.
7 Typus
This last observation leads us to consider the complex notion of Typus (type) briefly delineated by
Husserl, but of pivotal importance to understand the relation between the context as a mind-
independent dimension of regulated possibilities and our experience. The Typus «turns out to be the
basis»[13] for the possibility of our experience (both perceptual and conceptual); it is the pre-
conceptual [14] structure that contributes to the pre-characterization of the experience.
The Typus is an orienting structure based on the qualitative depth of the context that allows the
emergence of the objects of the experience. Every object emerges from an already typified context and
offers itself in a way which is, in its turn, not devoid of pre-characterizations. Before being actively
known, it unfolds its own typical (collected from its horizon), its peculiar anticipated traces, which
prefigure the style of its disclosure. Every trace is absorbed by the structure of context; it,
nevertheless, turns out to be the always-given place of that typification which allows the emergence
of a single phenomenon in its pre-identity [15].
The proper dynamic of the relation is circular. Experience is given in a context and moves within it
thanks to the possible emergence of the Typus; but it is also in the experience, that is in the receptive-
active process, that «at the same time, is prescribed a type, on the basis of which [...] other objects of a
similar kind also appear from the first in a preliminary familiarity and are anticipated according to a
horizon» [16].
If the steps taken by the active experience reverberate on the objects of the same species and on the
context, thus creating a type that will find its sedimentation in the forms of familiarity, it is also true
that the latter, with its typifications, makes possible the orientation of experience.
This twofold movement is due to the fact that the typified context is an always open structure. This
“openness” also marks the typicality of object and experience: the sedimentation of the type in the
folds of the context foresees the possibility of anticipation; every normative pre-expectation of the
type is prompt to receive, within itself, additional confirmations or corrections of the distinctive notes
it anticipates. This openness, as that of the context, is contingent and modifiable, and yet logical and
normative. In this way, the Typus fosters the experience, its meaningfulness, its repeatability and
regularity, and for this reason the Typus also makes possible the emergence and formation of the
concept.
• The Typus is, therefore, the median element between context and conceptuality,
between world and subject.
• It is the catalyst which allows the progress of the experience plunged in an open,
contingent, and yet regulated world. The Typus adjusts to the contingency that
characterizes the forms of the pre-predicative experience and sustains the liberty of
conceptuality.
• The Typus takes shape as an osmotic structure, which traverses the norm of the
context and turns out to be the basis for the development of conceptual knowledge, as it is
its “compass”.
• It possesses a hybrid plasticity, as a sort of non-intellectual category, although
ingrained in the experience.
• In this respect, the Typus can be thought of as a fundamental component of the
genetic phenomenology1; we may assert that it is the interchange, the element which
connects world and conceptuality.
At this stage of the analysis, I would like to make a further step: if the context is always-already
experienced in a typified manner, then we may suggest the hypothesis that the context retains, in
itself, a sort of basic conceptuality, which is offered to the operative thought of the subject. The Typus
is rooted in context as a dimension of possibility and at the same time shapes itself as the trait d'union
between the basic-worldly experience and the sphere of conceptual thought.
8 Context and Practice
The features identified in the notion of context and Typus can be reconsidered within the structure of
the Heideggerian praxis (practice). Heidegger recognizes that the most basic characteristic of our
experience is that it always occurs in the world, namely in a context. Accordingly, the most basic
modality of the Heideggerian subject, called Dasein, is being-in-the-world, namely, being always and
necessarily located in a specific context [17]. Starting from this fact, our primary access and relation
1 The aim of the genetic phenomenology is to bring the forms of judgment back to the ante-predicative
experience, showing that the latter is already inserted in a worldly logic which inherently has the distinctive
structures of category and concept.
to the world is represented by praxis. First of all, practice is the domain of what we do: when we live
in our everyday context, we move, we act, we do things, we use tools with some scope, but we also
talk and we socialize. Practice, in a broad definition, is the previous dimension to any theoretical
approach, like the one we maintain in the scientific theorization, where we need a sort of distance
from our being in a world.
Practice is where the meaning of being-in-the-world is most clear, because in the practical approach
the world is closer. Thus, following Heidegger, in the practical approach we can investigate the nature
of the world (context) and of the “wherein” that characterizes our experience in relation to it. Even
though the world does not exist without Dasein, it is not a mere projection: as the Husserlian context,
the world is a mind-independent [18] structure, and the human subject establishes an essential and
mutual relation with it .
8.1 The notion of world
The notion of world has been variously interpreted by Heidegger, but two definitions are crucial
here: the world as a totality of instruments, and the world as a consistent totality of assignments and
source of possibilities for the experience [19].
Everything we experience, and the modality by which we do that, are ingrained in the being of the
world, and the latter is, as well as the Husserlian context, the transcendental horizon [20], namely an a
priori condition of possibility, which favors the appearance of the entity and the encounter with it. In
order for its possibilities to be meaningful, it must comply with a certain order. This order is already
given in the world we experience and know.
Also in Heidegger's thought, the first encounter with the world occurs within the coordinates of
familiarity and everyday life. Familiarity allows the acknowledgment and orientation of Dasein;
familiarity and habit are not applied by the subjects on their context, but they are already inherent in
it, as something which orientates the average experience of Dasein. In Being and Time, familiarity
leads to the identification of a primary modality by which we interact with the world; this modality is
not the cognitive attitude towards the objects of experience, but a pre-theoretical approach, a practical
attitude.
By virtue of this acknowledgment, the context in which the experience is given is regarded as a
unitary structure, as it is a totality of instruments. The notion of world as totality of instruments and
the notion of entity as means (and not as object of perception or contemplation) imply that nothing
purely isolated is given; by definition «to the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality
of equipment, in which it can be this equipment that it is. Equipment in essentially “something in-
order-to...»[21]. Thanks to this definition, Heidegger provides the image of a world in which every
emergence experiences a constant correlation. We must acknowledge, indeed, that «in the in-order-to
as a structure there lies an assignments or reference of something to something» [22]. In order for the
structure of the assignments to be substantial, the totality of assignments cannot enjoy an utter logical
liberty, but it must be a consistent totality. Accordingly, the world may be defined as the coherent
totality of references, namely as a dimension which, independently from the subject, reveals its own
norm.
Therefore, Heidegger's praxis is bound to a world which shows its own structure and possesses an
inner consistency: the practical approach is already inserted into a norm, represented by the non-linear
chain of references among the entities. As Husserl would put it, the praxis is hooked to the pre-
conceptual structure of the context: in it, the praxis can move not only thanks to the qualitative-
material emergencies it is offered, but mostly due to the fact that these emergencies are already
invested with meaning. In other words, the praxis owes its possibility to the emergence and to the pre-
theoretical acknowledgment – which must occur within it – of the Typus, not yet expressed by the
theoretical approach. What I endeavor to argue is that the praxis moves within a world that already
shows a weak normativity, in which the structure of the Typus intervenes as a connecting component
between the forms of the world and their pre-epistemological acknowledgment.
8.2 Typus and practice
The Typus can, therefore, be thought of as implicitly grafted into the Heideggerian world, as the
fulcrum of the relation between world and conceptuality, as inner motor of the praxis. The praxis itself
enjoys a particular structure, similar to that of the Typus; the praxis is tightly connected to the world
that “withstands” it and conveys it, its freedom is not absolute, but is bound to the coherence of the
references offered by the context – in which, at the same time, actively develops an experiential
increment.
The original practical approach takes place into a horizon of meanings, which are due not only to
the subject's production, but are offered by the typified context: Praxis, unlike the theoretical attitude,
shows a relation more dependent on the context (dependent on the “resistance” of the world) and yet
more plastic (does not “fix” the entity in one assertion) and more regulated (it enjoys a relative liberty,
always given within the coordinates of familiarity). As the Typus, at the border with the theoretical
approach, it retains the possibility to introduce new modalities to the experience, which in their turn
will affect the open structure of the world and, therefore, that of the Typus.
As previously claimed, the Husserlian Typus suggests that a certain form of conceptuality already
subsists in the context and in the ante-predicative experience, an implicit conceptuality prompt to
become, thanks to the Typus, explicit and/or modified.
Also in the praxis the relation with conceptuality is ambivalent. As it is well known, Heidegger
distinguishes praxis and theoretical, purely conceptual approach, establishing between the two
approaches a derivation of the second from the first; still, even though the relation is derivative, this
does not mean that the praxis does not already retain, within itself, its own conceptuality.
We must, therefore, distinguish a theoretical approach in the narrow sense of the word (the
epistemological approach), a know that, from a theoretical approach in a broader sense, which
possesses a certain conceptuality, that of the know how, in which the praxis may be included.
The first typology of theoretic conceives the type as a concept regarded as a product of abstraction
traditionally understood, as something established to an epistemological end; the conceptuality
referred to by the second typology is that of the Typus, a conceptuality made possible by a structure of
articulation (ingrained in the context, ready to become explicit and be modified).
The Husserlian Typus and the Heideggerian praxis (the know how dimension we identified as
implicitly including the structure of the Typus) reveal a plastic structure, and yet regulated and logical,
which is tightly connected to the norm of the context and retain its own conceptuality which is to be
defined.
9 Conclusion
What I meant to do here is to focus our attention on the notion of context and the linked notion of
Typus, so as to underline their importance for the experience and for the emergence of its objects, also
of the conceptual ones.
The context turns out to be a mind-independent dimension, an articulated a priori condition of
possibility. Its internal articulation, the Typus, turns out to be a “median” structure between worldly
normativity and pre-conceptuality. Its role, with respect to conceptuality, is precisely what makes it an
extremely crucial (although complex) notion. The Typus lies at the crossroad between world and
concept as the possibility of their interaction. The insertion of the Typus in the context of Heidegger's
praxis could display, more limpidly, the interdependence of world, experience, and concept and how
these notions still need to be investigated and defined.
Context as typified and practice – as a dimension of experience linked to a typified world - show
that our experience in related to a dimension of open possibilities ( a regulated dimension of how)
where it is able to move accordingly with the emergencies rooted in context.
References
1. Compare in particularity with the role of context formulated in Husserl's Ideas.
For a complete study on the notion of context in Husserl's works, see: Smith D.W,
McIntyre R, Husserl and Intentionality: A study of Mind, Meaning, and
Language, Synthese Library, Dordrecht, 1982
2. See Smith D.W, McIntyre R, Husserl and Intentionality: A study of Mind,
Meaning, and Language, p. 264 and, Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper & Row, New York, 1962), p. 19, n. 4.
3. The text of reference is Husserl, Experience and Judgment, Routledge and Kegan,
London, 1973
4. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment, p. 122
5. Geniusas S., The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl's Phenomenology,Springer, Dordrecht,
2012, p. 198
6. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment, p. 30
7. Geniusas S., The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl's Phenomenology,p.177
8. «Every object is not a thing isolated in itself but is always already an object in its horizon of
typical familiarity and pre-cognizance. But this horizon in constantly in motion. », Husserl E.,
Experience and Judgment, p. 122
9. Geniusas S., The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl's Phenomenology,Springer, Dordrecht,
2012, p. 214
10. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment
11. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment, p. 72 ( my emphasis)
12. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment, p. 38
13. Lohmar D., Husserl's Type and Kant's Schemata, in D. Welton, The New Husserl.
A critical Reader, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2003, p. 107
14. Lohmar D., Husserl's Type and Kant's Schemata, p. 105
15. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment, § 26
16. Husserl E., Experience and Judgment, p. 124
17. The text of reference is Heidegger M., Being and Time, Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 2001
18. Heidegger M., Being and Time
19. These definitions may be found in Heidegger M., Being and Time, and in Heidegger M., The
Origin of Work of Art, in Off Beaten Track, Cambridge University Press, UK
20. See Heidegger M., On the Essence of Ground, in Pathmarks, Cambridge University Press,
UK, 1998, p. 19
21. Heidegger M., Being and Time, p. 97
22. Ibidem